


Void Of A Lullaby

by lovedsammy



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: Anxiety, Depression, Gen, Long-Term Imprisonment, Nazi Gang, PTSD, meth slave
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-06
Updated: 2013-10-06
Packaged: 2017-12-28 13:41:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/992626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovedsammy/pseuds/lovedsammy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After escaping the Nazis’ hideout, Jesse reflects on his days in captivity and the days after. Post-Felina.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Void Of A Lullaby

The first few hours are bliss.  
  
He’s almost happier than he can ever remember being, mostly because there were things, people, that made him far happier than he’s ever been in his life, much happier, but they’re gone now.  Everything is, so for once, he thinks, this is the happiest he could ever be allowed to be. So he revels in it, his freedom from being held as a prisoner and meth slave for so long so tangible it’s almost like a dream, a dream he’d envisioned every night when he was able to fall asleep, if he ignored the pangs of hunger and hurt, and the pain his body, both physically and mentally, was in.  
  
He’s still hurting, in every way imaginable, but he is so jovial he can’t bring himself to care. He’s driving the car on mere instinct alone, barely paying attention to the road, laughing, crying, all at once. His first instinct is get the hell out of here, as far as he can away from the dying man back at the hideout, the man who put him there in the first place along with the other carcasses back there. But he doesn’t know where to go, not really, and it’s the first time he is forced to come face-to-face with reality once more.  
  
He’s free. To make his own choices and make something of his life. Something different from who he was before – he was set on that – but getting there wasn’t a paved road, and he was going to have to rely on himself, and his instincts, more than ever. He settles on putting the thought on the back burner for now, just for the moment, until he was able to adjust to everything that had happened. For now, all he wanted, all he needed, was time to _breathe_.  
  
When he pulls up to his house, the home that feels almost foreign to him now with a sense of familiarity, because every time he imagined ‘home’ back in the cell, it seemed imaginary, as though it were never real; ‘home’ was far from his reach – he is only slightly surprised to see no cops, no feds, nothing, in front. The attention would have shifted from him to Walt, the legendary Heisenberg. Somehow, he was thankful for that. He parks, shakily exiting the vehicle and glances around warily, still jittery, expecting Todd or one of the bastards to show up from beyond the grave and drag him back into that hell hole once more. But no one is there, and though he has no keys anymore, he breaks in through the back as quietly as humanly possible.  
  
Cold runs up and down his spine as he slowly paces the inside. It’s still somewhat clean, just the way he’d left it, but it gives off the air that it hasn’t been lived in a very long time, and just to make it feel more alive, he brushes his hand along the fabric of his touch. He wants to sit down, sit down and just go to sleep, the home beginning to beckon him. Instead, he heads towards the bathroom, a real bathroom, a real place to piss and shit instead of a fucking bucket, and a shower, a real shower.  
  
He hasn’t paid his electric bill in months, and without even flipping the lights, he knows it’s been turned off. Still, he undresses, struggling to get the overly-worn and dirty clothes off of him, clothes he can freely undo and toss away. Or burn, his mind suggests. They’re Todd’s anyway, at least he thinks. The pants may have been Jack’s, but he doesn’t linger on the forethought. It’s dark, so dark he can barely see in front of his face, so he finds a lighter and lights a small candle, relaxing slightly with the light and warmth it emits, and gets into the shower.  
  
The water is cold, so cold, upon his skin, but inside he is warm and content, and he washes his hair and body three, four, five times over before he’s satisfied enough. He’ll never feel as clean as he had been – no shower could erase what happened, the days in the lab, the touching, the laughter and cackling as they made their use of him – and he lowers himself, curling onto his bruised and throbbing side, the water still raining down upon him, and he cries.  
  
The sun has come up when he stops, and he finds the strength only half-heartedly to find a pair of his own clean clothes, clothes that smell and feel like him, and comb his regrown hair, which he likes a bit better now that it’s been cleaned, and tries to fix and adjust his posture back into the man he’d been before this had happened. He fails. He’s only vaguely aware that his shoulders are hunched in tension, that he still staggers when he walks as if his body is still under the impression it is restricted by the shackles and chains. He goes to pull at them, but finds they are no longer there.  
  
The first night and day are hard.  
  
The next are the hardest.  
  
He’s cried more than he ever has in his life, depleted himself of most of his water and become dehydrated, so much that he feels sickly. He finally looks into a mirror in the daylight and sees what those mother fuckers had done to him, at the pale, almost yellow tinge to his skin, the scars old and new that haven’t healed yet, the slight yellowed pus in the wounds, a sign of infection from a lack of care. There are far deeper scars, far deeper and more extensive wounds. The bruises on his thighs and rib cage from where he’d been punched and kicked and thrown around by Jack and his guys over and over. He knew at least a few of them were fractured, by how hard it was to walk and breathe. There was a massive one on his back from where the catch in the lab had held him in place, the metal pulling painfully on him when he tried to move.  
  
And the muscles inside, the damage from the abuse as well as the other things that they’d done... he shudders, willing himself not to remember. But where dreams of sanding and making the perfect box held him together during those months of captivity, it is the nightmares and memories of that place that break him apart.  
  
The second night, he wakes up screaming, crying, trembling, and no one is there to soothe him. The third, he hurts himself thrashing in his sleep, reopening a wound on his face that bleeds over onto his sheets. By the fourth, he needs out, he needs to get away, from this house, from this town and its people, all of it. He takes what he has left of his things, any little money he had left, and he flees. The car gets him to the bus station to where he abandons it at a nearby gas station, and he waits.  
  
The TV for the public is showing the news, and in the top headline, the opening segment, there it is: Nation-wide manhunt and investigation draws to a close – top methamphetamine king pen contained. For a moment, he wonders if Walt survived the gunshot wound, managed to save himself, and was arresed instead. But then he hears the words ‘deceased on scene’ and another, involuntary shiver runs through him again. The bus headed to Fairbanks, Alaska blares on the speakers, and he gets up, attention still drawn to the headline, the words, ‘deceased, deceased, deceased’....  
  
Walter White would never haunt him again. The old coot had finally croaked, in one last attempt to save his life. It felt fitting. Poetic, even. The bitterness and anger and hatred still lingered there, but something unbidden, a strange sense of acknowledgment and loss was ringing over him. By the time he’s in his seat staring out the window, one of the only passengers headed for the other side of the country, his face is coated in tears.  
  
Hours later, he wakes from a peaceful slumber, the first good dream he’s had in days, and he almost forgets where he is, where he’s going. There is someone else three seats from him who glances up from his book with a raised eyebrow, looking somewhat alarmed, who asks if he’s all right, and he nods, attempting to calm his racing heart. He wonders if it will ever decrease, this heightened sense of fear that the rug will just be pulled out from under him, that this day will simply end and he’ll be back in that hole in the ground.  
  
But it doesn’t, and when he finally arrives in Alaska, he realizes it’s never going to end. Alaska is much different from what he was used to, where he came from, and that is all right. He is all right. A new city, new faces, a new life. He was still Jesse Pinkman, a criminal burn-out junkie, but now he didn’t have to be just that man anymore. He could finally be who and what he wanted.  Hell, if his parents even gave one iota of a shit, they’d probably even be proud right now.  
  
Then there was Mike, old Mike, who probably would smile that grandpa-like half-grin and say, ‘Good job, kid’, and Andrea and Brock, who’d hug him and smile, glad he’d taken the initative to turn his life around. And Jane... sweet Jane, who he thought of now, standing on snow-covered streets and clamming his hands into his oversized hoodie’s pockets with cold. He knows she would’ve loved it here.  
  
The memory of Walt’s nod of farewell and fondness creeps back into his mind’s eye, and he swallows. _I think that would be good for you. A whole new life._ Somehow, it suddenly feels bitter, taking up what the man had suggested and getting out of dodge, going to live some place new. He thinks maybe, just maybe, the man had given a shit about him after all. Had cared somewhere underneath that fatherly guise and egotistical psychopathy. That maybe he’d be glad, happy, that Jesse had gotten out after all.  
  
It’s something he can never know, so he dismisses it. He buys a hot coffee and a couple of jelly-filled donuts from the little shop inside the station, which warms his cold hands, and sits down on one of the comfortable, plushy chairs and picks up a newspaper, checking the classified ads and homes for rent. His attention is shifted when a little boy runs past him, pulling his mother playfully along in his haste to get the ‘delicious jelly donuts’. Jesse grins, and the woman and boy meet his eye, smile in return; then they’re gone, and he tosses the newspaper back down, sure of where he’s going to go now. The memories of his life before start to pan out, like a camera retreating.  
  
Hours later, when he finally has a new place to call home and been informed on the local areas that are good for visitation, he is able to fall asleep quickly in bed, the warmth of the covers and lowly lit fireplaces soothing. He dreams of the box again that night. But now, he isn’t in hell. To him, it’s something close but not quite achieving paradise. And for him, that would do.


End file.
